Marcus Bach Fellowship 

The Marcus Bach Fellowship, named for the 1942 University of Iowa graduate of the same name, is awarded to graduate students in the humanities to support the completion of an MFA project or doctoral dissertation. The fellowship’s goal is to foster intercultural communication and the understanding of diverse philosophies and religious perspectives.  

Each fellow receives a semester of support including a $10,700 salary, a tuition scholarship for 2 semester hours credit, and more. 

The five recipients for the 2024-25 school year are: 

• Caelainn Barr, Department of English (Nonfiction Writing Program), "Written in the Land" 
  Barr’s project is a memoir grounded in archival research and interviews that explores the intersection of religion, spirituality in nature and family history. The work is set against the backdrop of conflict in in Northern Ireland. 
• Nathan Chaplin, Department of History, "Surveying the Tropics, Constructing the Heartland: Identify Formation in Nicaragua and the Midwest" 
  Chaplin’s project investigates the alliances formed between Nicaraguan and Midwestern elites as they attempted to manage public health crises, state policy, and capital investment during the 19th and 20th centuries. 
• Spencer Jones, Department of English (Nonfiction Writing Program), “All Skillful in the Wars” 
  Jones’s thesis explores political and theological tensions in the lives of radical-revolutionary schoolteachers Harriet Wheeldon and Simone Weil. 
• Xiaoyan Kang, Department of Theatre Arts, “The Words of Ants" 
  Kang’s thesis takes the form of a play drawing inspiration from the 1983 script Nüshu, or the script of women. Through it, the playwright intends to explore how individual experiences are interpreted to serve a particular narrative. 
• Mariana Mazer, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, “The book as an object and container of multiple stories" 
  Mazer’s dissertation explores the relationship between the book as a physical object and the narratives it contains, ultimately printing and binding eight copies of the finished thesis.